By Alberto Nardelli & Ott Tammik When Kaja Kallas became Estonia’s prime minister she thought foreign policy was her weak spot. So she got to work. With recommendations from other leaders, Kallas drew up a study program. And she’s still at it.
When Kaja Kallas became Estonia’s prime minister she thought foreign policy was her weak spot. So she got to work. With recommendations from other leaders, Kallas drew up a study program. And she’s still at it.
But most of all she will be charged with shaping the EU response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. That, along with Vladimir Putin’s threat to the rest of Europe, is a subject she knows inside out. Kallas often tells the story of how her mother was deported to Siberia in a cattle wagon with her family as a baby.
The western Europeans who laid the foundations of the EU liked to describe it as a peace project built on the ashes of World War II. The eastern member states that joined from 2004 have a different perspective. “This is an enormous responsibility at this moment of geopolitical tensions,” Kallas said in a statement following her nomination. “We must continue working together to ensure Europe is an effective global partner to keep our citizens safe, free and prosperous.”
A year later in Versailles, Kallas debated into the early hours to ensure the fine print on Ukraine’s EU accession didn’t give opponents any latitude to block the process. Her legal training encourages her to attend to the precision of wordings others don’t give as much thought to, one diplomat remarked.
But her popularity at home has tanked despite a landslide election victory last year. Several senior officials, including the president, have called for her to resign after it emerged that her husband was a shareholder in a company doing business in Russia. Meanwhile the EU’s longest recession has seen the Estonian economy contract for the past nine quarters.
Von der Leyen visited Estonia in 2022 and the prime minister took her to visit a textile factory near the border with Russia founded by the commission president’s great grandfather. Von der Leyen said the trip brought alive “these distant fairy tales” she’d been told of her family’s history as a child.
French support has been a key factor in securing Kallas’s new position. Finding common ground with Germany will be a crucial challenge when she gets to work. Chancellor Olaf Scholz is fiercely opposed to the idea of more joint European borrowing.
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